American Tropic (5 page)

S
harp morning sunlight glares off the pyramid-shaped wood tower surrounded by mangrove swamp. A tour bus travels on the gravel road leading to the tower. The bus’s high black rubber tires kick up a cloud of white dust. The bus rolls to a stop in front of the tower. The side of the bus is painted with bright green words:
FLORIDA KEYS ECO-AWARE
.

Ecotourists step out of the vehicle with eager purpose. Slung around the necks of the men and women are binoculars and cameras. They wear fashionable shorts and green T-shirts emblazoned with
DON’T FOOL WITH MOTHER NATURE
.
They aim their cameras at the wooden pyramid tower.

The last person out of the bus is a tour guide with a
tight expression of righteousness etched on her youthful face. She motions for the group to gather around her. The tourists snap to attention at her words. “Many years ago, a real-estate tycoon had a grand scheme. He wanted to drain this mangrove swamp and build a city here. But first he had to eradicate the mosquito population that swarms by the billions from this swamp. So the clever developer built this eighty-foot-high wooden tower to house thousands of bats. The plan was that at night the bats would fly out from the tower to eat the mosquitoes. It seemed like a good idea at the time, an army of bats gobbling up bloodthirsty mosquitoes.”

The ecotourists groan their disapproval of the developer’s scheme.

A thin young man wearing a green silk bandanna tight around his forehead speaks up. “Are the bats still inside? I’d just like to—”

A ruddy-faced Australian cuts off the question with his thick accent. “Hell, mate, if the bats are inside, all the bloody buggers will be hanging upside down asleep. Maybe Count Dracula is in there with them. Spoookyyy.”

The thin young man looks nervously at the tower. “That’s not funny, dude!”

The guide raises her hand for quiet and continues her story. “The developer’s grandiose mosquito-eating scheme didn’t work. The bats flew away and never returned. The guy went belly-up, lost all his money, and slunk back to where he came from.”

The ecotourists give a congratulatory cheer.

The Australian chimes in. “Bloody hell, that served the greedy grubber right.”

The guide looks out across the surrounding fetid mangrove
swamp of tangled tree trunks and branches. “The Florida Keys are a one-of-a-kind unique and fragile environment which we all must respect and protect. What is the lesson that I’ve been teaching you on this tour?”

The ecotourists chant in unison: “Don’t fool with Mother Nature or Mother Nature will fool with you!”

The guide beams her approval. “Let this tower stand as a living lesson to all those who want to come to our paradise and try to rip it off.”

The ecotourists pump their fists, shouting, “Don’t fool with Mother Nature!”

“Good. Now, let’s take a closer look at this tower and witness one man’s folly.” The guide leads the group across the crunchy gravel road. She stops beneath the tower’s base of massive wooden support struts. She beckons the tourists to gather around. “At one time this was the highest structure in the Florida Keys between Miami and Key West. The tower could be seen by passing ships from miles out at sea. Take a look up and see how high this is—quite a feat.”

The ecotourists bend their heads back and look up inside the soaring shaft. In a stunned moment of silence, their eyes widen as they are transfixed by the vision they see in the clammy darkness far above, at the tower’s point. Their sudden shouts and screams echo up the shaft in panicked horror. They turn and run between the tower’s massive support struts and back onto the road. They attempt to knock one another out of the way as they scramble toward the bus. The thin man with the tight green bandanna is pushed aside and falls onto the road; the gravel cuts into his knees, drawing blood. The tour guide yanks him up by the arm. He looks back toward
the tower and his body shakes violently. A spray of vomit shoots from his mouth and splatters at the tour guide’s feet. The guide tightens her grip on the wobbling man’s arm and runs with him toward the bus, where the others are cowering in their seats.

L
uz steers her white Dodge Charger down the skinny slot of Olivia Street. The street is crowded on both sides with century-old Cuban cigar-makers’ shacks, built when Key West was the cigar-producing capital of the world, rolling out a million smokes a year. None of the shacks retain their original bare-board anonymity, having been painted by affluent new owners to a pastel prettiness. Gone are the generations of Cubans who once stood on the porches calling out hot gossip to neighbors in hot weather. The humid air no longer carries the garlic scent of sizzling shrimp and the sweet aroma of Cuban bread. The white fences in front of the shacks have been trimmed of their overgrown red bougainvillea and riotous yellow allamanda blossoms. Everything is prim and calm, like a street in a proper New England port town, not the boisterous place where Luz grew up.

Luz turns her car at the corner of Olivia onto wide Duval Street. She parks in front of one of the last Cuban expresso-
buche
shops on the island not retrofitted into a trendy franchise coffee palace. The shop is a nondescript narrow storefront with a slotted hole cut in a cement
wall to pass the coffee through. Luz gets out of her car and orders her third
buche
double of the morning. She watches through the slotted hole as a broad-butted Cuban woman dressed in tight blue jeans works at the sputtering and hissing nozzle of a monstrous old burnished expresso machine. The woman turns with a triumphant smile and presents a cup of steaming
buche
to Luz, who cradles it in her hand.

Sipping her hot caffeine nectar in the sun’s morning glare, Luz keeps her eyes on the Duval Street activity from behind her sunglasses. Packs of excited vacationers in shorts and flip-flops hurry by on the sidewalk, darting into gift shops, trying on T-shirts with tropical scenes silk-screened on them, and buying Key West’s two most famous postcard photos, the mile-zero sign at the end of Highway 1, and the tall bullet-shaped concrete monument at the Atlantic’s edge declaring
SOUTHERNMOST POINT CONTINENTAL U.S.A.—90 MILES TO CUBA
.

From the open window of Luz’s car, parked at the curb, a police dispatcher’s radio voice drones. Luz takes another sip of
buche
as she listens to the bored voice announcing bicycle thefts, lost dogs, and jaywalkers. The voice is suddenly drowned out by the roar of a motorcycle. She turns to see Pat on her Harley-D jump the curb behind the Charger and come to a tire-burning stop on the sidewalk, scattering the startled tourists.

Luz eyes Pat with mock discipline. “I could arrest you for that stunt.”

Pat tightens her grip on the Harley’s chrome handlebars. She fixes Luz with a bold stare. “Oh, I want to be arrested. That’s my dream, one night locked up with you. I’ll lick all the brown sugar out of your bowl. You should
jilt your girlfriend, Joan. Hop on my bike. We’ll never look back.”

Luz swallows her coffee. “You still poaching endangered turtles?”

Pat flexes the muscles of her bare arm with the octopus tattoo, bulking up the one-eyed creature’s nasty-looking tentacles. “No one will ever catch me. But, hey, you can catch that ecofreak brother of Joan’s. He’s broadcasting illegally over the radio.”

“Noah broadcasts from outside the city limits. I don’t have jurisdiction on the ocean. That’s for the feds.”

“I hope his pissy pirate boat sinks in the middle of a shit slick dumped from a thousand crappers off a cruise ship.”

Pat gazes over at the gleaming white Charger SRT8, taking in its arched rear-end cobra-wing spoiler and the black front grille open-jawed like an onrushing land shark.

She grins. “You got yourself some unmarked cop car, tricked out like a Cuban Miami pimp-mobile. I know there’s a siren embedded in that grille, and red strobe-lights under those halogen headbeams that you can switch on from inside. How come you got all the flash, when most of Key West’s dumb-dicks poke around in stupid Ford Victorias?”

Luz grins back. “I have this rocket because I’ll need it to go a quarter of a mile in twelve seconds when I’m coming to bust your ass.”

“Like I said, no one can catch me.”

Luz shakes her head and looks long at Pat.
“No hay rosas sin espinas.”

“Huh? I don’t
habla
the Es-span-yolla. What are you saying?”

“There are no roses without thorns.”

Pat twists her Harley’s throttle in a rev and shouts above the engine’s loud growl, “I’ll take that as a compliment. Whenever you get tired of your blond bunny, you come running to me. I’m the only real rose in the garden. With me you get the prick of the thorns and not just the flower’s soft petal. Life on the edge. It’s your choice, brown sugar.” Pat roars off.

From Luz’s police radio, the droning dispatcher’s voice suddenly crackles with urgency. “Code five at Sugarloaf Key Bat Tower! All Alpha units respond!”

Luz gulps her coffee and starts her car. She switches on her outside flashing red lights and siren and speeds away.

L
uz skids to a stop in front of the pyramid-shaped bat tower. Behind her, Deputy Detective Moxel pulls up in his late-model Ford Victoria police car. They both cut their engines and jump out.

Moxel cocks a hand above his eyes to block the sunlight glaring off the tower as he surveys the situation. He puts on his sunglasses. “I don’t see anything going on—place is deserted. Why’d they radio an urgent homicide dispatch? We’re even out of Key West jurisdiction up here.”

Luz doesn’t answer; she hurries toward the tower. Moxel follows with a scowl. They both step under the massive wooden support struts of the tower’s broad base.
Luz looks up into the shadowy interior of the ascending wooden shaft and points. “There’s our customer.”

Moxel pushes in close to Luz and stares up. At the top of the pyramid’s narrowing peak hangs a human body. He grabs Luz’s arm and pulls her away. “Let’s get out of here and call for backup.”

Luz shakes loose from Moxel. She grips the first slat of a ladder fixed to the side of the tower. “I’m going up.” She starts climbing the ladder, hand over hand, pulling herself into the higher reaches.

Moxel watches Luz climbing farther away and shouts: “You crazy? Could be somebody’s baiting a trap with that body. I said we should call for backup.”

Luz stops climbing. In the stifling air of the narrow shaft, she wipes sweat from her forehead. She looks back at Moxel below. He seems distant and insignificant. She pulls her pistol out of its holster. She continues climbing into even hotter air. Buzzing flies whiz around her. She waves her pistol at the oncoming flies, and the sudden shift of her body weight puts pressure on the supporting wood slat of the ladder beneath her feet. The slat gives way and tears out with a creaking rip. Luz drops her gun and grabs the slat above her with both hands. She hangs suspended in the air, her legs swinging beneath her. She looks at the slat above that she is hanging on to; the rusty nails securing it begin slowly pulling out.

The sound of Moxel’s angry voice rises through the shaft. “Goddamn, I told you to wait. Hold on, I’m coming.”

Luz looks down as Moxel makes his way up the ladder. He carefully climbs from one wood slat to the next until he reaches her.

Moxel grabs Luz’s dangling legs. “I’ve got you. Let your weight shift onto me. I’m a strong guy, I’ll get you down.”

“No. I’m going up.”

“You can’t. This is a trap. Somebody loosened the nails on these slats to kill anyone trying to get to the body.”

“Keep your grip on my legs and push me up so I can grab on to the next slat.”

“I can’t do that. Our combined weight will rip out the slats and we’ll fall.”

Luz’s brown eyes narrow into severe slits. She speaks in a guttural growl. “That’s an order, goddamn it. Boost me up!”

Moxel tightens his hold around Luz’s legs. “Okay, but you’re going to kill us both.” He grunts and boosts her.

Luz grabs on to the next slat, pulling the weight of her body higher until she is able to gain a foothold on the lower slat.